马克斯·韦伯论“议会民主制”——理性“铁笼”的祛除与一战后德国政治生活的重建

Max Weber on“Parliamentary Democracy”--The Elimination of Rational“Iron Cage”and the Reconstruction of German Political Life after the Great War

韦伯毕生所关心的问题是理性化/官僚制与自由的关系,他试图在现代社会理性化不断推进的过程中去寻求捍卫人类自由和尊严的政治方案。以往的研究一般集中在对韦伯“领袖民主制”的探讨上,并认为领袖民主制的宪政框架无法清除极权主义要素,因而也就无法实质地去应对理性化问题。这些研究忽视了韦伯为消除德国官僚制危机而提出的另一种可能——议会民主制。韦伯设想的议会民主制体现了其试图用卡里斯玛来疗救官僚制,同时又希望用议会民主来约束卡里斯玛的良苦用心,理论层面上是比领袖民主制在应对德国官僚制所带来的自由危机方面更为合宜的选择。

Max Weber should be seen as a liberal.The key problem of Max Weber is the relationship between rationalization/bureaucracy and freedom.Weber tried to find some solutions to defend human freedom and dignity in the process of rationalization.Previous research often focused on Weber's"Leadership Democracy"and argued that the constitutional framework of leadership democracy could not eliminate totalitarian factors and thus couldn’t deal with the problem of rationalization.These studies ignored another possibility that Weber had proposed to eliminate the Germany bureaucratic crisis—Parliamentary Democracy.This paper argues that Weber's parliamentary democracy reflects his attempt to use charisma to cure bureaucracy,while hoping to use parliamentary democracy to constrain charisma.This paper also argues that the parliamentary democracy is a more appropriate choice than the leadership democracy in dealing with the freedom crisis brought about by Germany bureaucracy.